Citation

Danese A, Widom CS. JAMA Psychiatry 2021; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, American Medical Association)

DOI

10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2021.2874

PMID

34643689

Abstract

Childhood maltreatment is a key risk factor for life-course psychopathology. However, the nature of this association remains unclear. Professionals working with young people who experienced documented abuse and neglect are all too familiar with the complex clinical presentations seen in this population. Similarly, professionals working with adult clients with mental health problems are often presented with reports of childhood maltreatment.

These objective and subjective measures by which young people and adults are typically identified as experiencing childhood maltreatment were long assumed to be equivalent and, thus, have been used interchangeably in the clinic.1 Researchers have also capitalized on this assumption to study the underlying mechanisms leading to mental health problems, for example, hoping to identify neurobiological abnormalities linked to the exposure to childhood maltreatment by comparing adults with or without retrospective recall of childhood maltreatment...

Language: en